Braveheart

Years ago one summer, I was stuck tending bar at perhaps the un-classiest Yacht Club this side of the Ganges, a place people of the Hamilton tribe refer to as “Royal Hamilton Yacht Club”. It’s not a bad location, and the club itself is a nice enough place; but at the time, the manager in charge was a clattering doofus, incapable of tying his own goddamn shoes, let alone running a bar. And the clientele…jesus. You’d be hard pressed to find a more shameful group of adulterers, louses, charlatans, scumbags or freaks outside of a circus. Still, I enjoyed the job enough (mostly due to my frequent raiding of the bar’s booze), and my co-workers were decent folks.

To get to the point, one evening we were playing this game called “State Your Unpopular Opinion”. Now I’ll admit that I’ve got a few of ‘em – for example, I firmly hold that laws against midget-tossing should be repealed. However, I’ve never faced such inclement disgust as when I voiced my opinion on the 1995 Mel Gibson movie Braveheart.

“It’s not great,” I told my co-workers. “It’s really just a corny, stupid action flick.”

The crowd was not impressed.

“You’re a fool!” one of the bartenders gasped.

“I’ve just lost all respect I ever had for you as a human being,” another said.

So thus my review of this film – to justify my well-founded opinion on it, and to expose to others that Braveheart is a ridiculous, inaccurate, Anglo-phobic hoax made by an anti-Semitic fuckwad (but that it’s still a pretty entertaining action flick).

Oh where to begin. Well, I suppose the beginning of the movie is a good place to start, where a young William Wallace (Gibson), his father and brother fight against the hated English, who occupy Scottish lands. Gibson emerges from the battle unscathed, but his father and bro are killed, meaning that Wallace has to go off to some distant land to be raised by his uncle.

Flash forward a decade (give or take), and Wallace has returned to his beloved Scotland, only to see that the land is still ruled with an iron fist by the cruel English King, Edward I, or “Longshanks” (still one of the most badass nicknames a king can have).

Wallace falls in love with the village babe, Murron. As screenplay logic dictates, practically minutes after they’re married, evil English troops swoon in, with the local Lord demanding “primae noctis” – basically, the right of the local Lord to bone one’s wife before anyone else does. Now here’s the rub: there’s no evidence at all – zilch, zero, nada – that “primae noctis” was used by Longshanks, nor by any English army at the time. So in essence, Hollywood invented this completely. As well, the actor who plays the local Lord is about as appealing as one of the locals at the Hamilton Yacht Club, meaning he’s got the looks of a monkey with none of the intelligence. What would happen if said Lord were played by, say, George Clooney? Or better yet, Hugh Grant? Sigh…

Moving on, Murron gets killed for trying to defend her honour, Wallace loses his shit, starts a battle, and before you know it, a full-out war to gain Scottish independence is underway. No, wait…that doesn’t sound right. It’s a fight for Scottish freedom. No…hold on….not quite there…it’s a fight for FREEDOM!!!!

This type of bullshit line is used again and again throughout Braveheart. Wallace utters the word “freedom!” only 120 times or so, and even at the end of the film, when the English are mercifully gutting the simplistic goon, he manages to scream out “freedom!!” (In real life, Wallace’s last words were probably more like, “FUCK THIS HURTS!!!”)

See, the problem with Braveheart is that at its core, it’s just not true. Sure, William Wallace was a heroic figure who fought for Scottish FREEDOM!!!, but that’s about it. For example:

-In the film, Wallace and his men wear belted plaid. However, in the period in question, no Scot wore this, let alone kilts of any kind
-Wallace himself never met Isabelle, the French princess
-Wallace was actually a rich landowner, not a simple village lad
-Primae noctis was never used by King Edward, nor any of his armies

This probably only scrapes the tip of the iceberg.

Braveheart does get a few things right. Longshanks, for example, is a fantastic villain; in fact, I was rooting for him the whole movie. The supporting cast is appropriately stereotypical. And the French Princess, Isabelle, is a total babe.

As well, it is an entertaining film. If it was on TV right now, chances are I’d be watching it. It’s well-filmed. The acting is decent enough. The sets and the costumes and the fighting and everything else are truly top-notch.

But my main argument is that people think that Braveheart is on par with something like Schindler’s List or Citizen Cane. It’s not, and it’s a crime that it fucking won Best Picture and Best Director. I realize that year was a particularly weak one (seriously, Babe was one of the other contenders), but still…Se7en and Usual Suspects are both ’95 flicks…and those two are miles above and beyond this stinking hunk of Scottish bullshit.

Take Braveheart for what it is: an action movie – nothing more, nothing less. That, my dear readers, is my unpopular opinion.

Teen Wolf

Been busy for the past lil’ while, so apologies for not updating this stupid blog. You know how it is – drinking, working…well, more drinking than working, but whatever.

Now to get down to business: Teen Wolf. I watched this fucking masterpiece a few days ago and couldn’t believe how awesome it is (except for the ending). Michael J. Fox as teenage loser cum werewolf? Sign me up.

I think that, problematically, this film often gets overlooked when we refer to stupid ‘80s flicks, and when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The filmmakers all but admitted that this movie was released simply to ride on the coattails of Back to the Future’s success, and other than J. Fox, the rest of the cast are throwaways. Nevertheless, TW is a great addition to the 80s shit collection, with its campy soundtrack, dated styles, and over-the-top dramedy. Hey, if you’ve got nothing to watch on the tube except for a few episodes of Full House, it’s definitely worth a gander.

The movie opens up with a basketball game in which the hapless Scott Howard (Fox) watches his shitty team struggle to even land a single hoop against the visiting Dragons. Naturally, the Dragon’s team consists entirely of douchebags, with particular douchebagedness placed upon the character, Mick, a high school senior who looks closer to forty than seventeen (par for the course in these films, I guess).

Scott feels like crap that he’s such a loser and that his team sucks, and the hot chick (who is also dating Mick) won’t even look at him. We also get a glimpse into Scott’s life. His mother died when he was a young’n, and he lives with his super awesome dad. Scott’s hot next door neighbour, Boof (wtf kind of name is that?!) has a huge crush on him, but he’s too stupid to realize it. All in all, Scott’s social situation at the outset of the movie is one of pre-destined mediocrity and banality.

Flash forward to later that evening, and Scott notices some weird shit starting to happen to him. He’s sweating like a dog. His ears are getting pointy. He suddenly has giant teeth. But this being a movie, Scott doesn’t do what most rational people would do (which is to get to a goddamn doctor asap), but instead heads to the big party. And what a party this is! Really, this scene made me miss high school so much…well, at least the Hollywood version of a high school party, which is probably a hell of a lot better than real life.

Anyways, at this party Scott starts feeling really weird. While locked in the closet with Boof (they’re expected to make out), he tears the back of her shirt with the lust and depravity of a man-dog. She freaks out, he’s aghast (because he’s too much of a pussy to ever act like that), and he runs off into the night. When he gets home, he locks himself in the bathroom, and that’s when the transformation kicks in – Scott’s full-fledged change into the Wolf.

The best thing about this scene is that Scott’s dad is pounding on the door for his son to open up, and when he relents, he finds that his dad is a werewolf too. “Why didn’t you tell me?!” he demands. “Well, son,” he replies. “Sometimes it skips a generation.”

And so it goes, Scott soon begins to enjoy his new-found Wolf-dom. He excels at basketball, bringing his team to the final game (against who else but the Dragons?) despite the fact that said team is peopled with either buckwheat-thin crackers or fat tubs of lard (there’s actually a fat dude character called “Chubby” – I love 80s movies). His best friend “Styles” – a guy who looks about 35 and is clearly ripped on blow the entire film – brings him into the cool crowd and pimps Wolf merchandise, making Scott a legend at school. The hot chick who previously treated Scott with the same disdain as a used tampon now wants to fuck his brains out. So all in all, everything looks pretty hunky dory for our protagonist, right?

Wrong – for several reasons. You see, the Wolf ain’t the real Scott (or so his dad says). Because when Scott’s the Wolf, he’s a terrifying, badass motherfucker, unlike the human Scott, who sucks at basketball, can’t land the dream girl, and probably masturbates a lot. But at the same time, the Wolf (you can tell I love italicizing this word) takes over. And the more the Wolf comes out, the more Scott ceases to be Scott.

So in typical Hollywood fashion, instead of just being a fucking Wolf and enjoying life and bagging hot broads and vanquishing/slashing enemies, Scott decides that he just has to be himself. And somehow, when he resolves to just be Scott, he leads his team to a decisive win over the Dragons, and chooses Boof over the heartbreakingly hot chick. Thus we get the happy ending that everyone wants, Scott gets the girl, and the fore-mentioned douchebag Mick gets his comeuppance (well, sort of, but not really).

See, I like this movie. It’s great, it’s campy, and, well, it’s just plain entertaining. But my preferred ending would be for Scott to just stay a Wolf and rip Mick’s throat out, eat his aorta and get on with things. But Hollywood has to jam the “be yourself” message down everyone’s throat. It’s too bad.

By the way, I don’t recommend Teen Wolf Too – the hideous sequel. Now that movie is just plain ridiculous.

Encino Man

The fish out of water theme is always a Hollywood favourite, and there’s really no better example than the 1992 comedy Encino Man, in which a caveman, frozen for millennia in the backyard of a duo of stoners, thaws out and reverses their fortunes in popularity and babedom.

While many have vehemently accused Encino Man of being a stupid movie (of which it most certainly is), I can’t help but deny that it possesses a certain charm…a certain charisma…a certain je ne sais quoi. Whether it’s early in the morning or late at night, if this flick is on the tube, I’ll be watching it.

The movie starts out back in caveman times, with the main caveman (suitably played by Brendan Fraser) and his cavewoman becoming victim to what looks like an ice age flash flood or something. Skip forward to 1992 Los Angeles, where friends Dave (Sean Astin) and Stoney (Pauly Shore) are digging a pool in Dave’s backyard, and what do they come across? A giant block of ice with what appears to be a Neanderthal trapped inside, of course. (How a mammoth-sized block of frozen water could survive for thousands of years beneath the searing heat of Southern California is never clearly explained, but we’re not exactly talking about the most scientifically-accurate movie now, are we?)

Anyways, Dave and Stoney unearth this thing, bring it inside, and next thing you know, a pre-civilization caveman is running around their house, making paintings on the wall with his shit, eating dog food, and starting fires in Dave’s room.

As screenwriting convention would have it, the two friends temper this wild guy and manage to dress him in all the latest fashion treads and tell Dave’s folks that he’s an Estonian exchange student named Linkovitch Chomofski (Link – get it?). Dave’s folks fall for this nonsense and within days, Link is the toast of the school, bagging chicks and becoming best buds with everyone from AV geeks to the “hip-hoppers” (man I miss the ‘90s).

There’s only one guy standing in his way – Matt, a popular jock who just so happens to be dating the hottest babe in school…a babe with who Dave is madly in love. Matt doesn’t take too kindly to Link’s rock-eating and hard-partying ways, and several episodes throughout the film illustrate just how much a prick Matt actually is. Luckily for all of us, he gets his comeuppance in front of the whole school, with Dave, Stoney and Link taking the throne as coolest kids on the block. Dave even manages to get the girl in the end, too, despite being an ugly, hapless bonehead. Ah, the movies.

There are a few great things about this film, first among them being Pauly Shore. The guy is clearly baked out of his mind the entire time, and as the audience, we can join in appreciating this. Shore obviously knows what a silly premise this film is, and just rolls with the stupidity by injecting as much fun into the roll as possible. This isn’t so much acting as it is hitting the bong and then just showing up to a film shoot. He also delivers some memorable Pauly Shore lines, such as “munching some grindage”, “chasing the Weaz”, and so forth.

The other great part of this ridiculously stupid movie is a bar scene where Pauly Shore and Link get black-out drunk with a couple of tough guy Latinos. I suspect that this wasn’t in the original screenplay, and was probably just an excuse for Shore and Fraser to drink on studio time, but the director clearly saw how priceless the scene was and they kept it. As an aside, I love how in Hollywood movies, whenever underagers get into a bar in the middle of the day, it’s packed.

There’s plenty of holes and gaps in logic in Encino Man, but one must take it for what it is: a cheap thrill. Sure, it’s one of the most dated films from that period (the other being Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead – god, I used to love that movie), but the kitsch factor is pretty good. It’s also funny how Brendan Fraser and Sean Astin have gone on to become huge stars while Shore had to make a movie ten years later about what a washout he’d become.

To finish off this review, I thought I’d share a dream of mine.

I’ve secretly (well, not-so-secretly) always wanted to pen a screenplay called Blackbeard Collegiate. The idea for this film was to basically rip off the entire plot of Encino Man, but replace the caveman with a pirate. The film would start out with a 17th century high seas chase between a British navy schooner and a rogue pirate vessel, in which of course the pirate vessel would hit a time-warp and for some reason be flashed-forward to the present, where a couple of nerdy high school kids would discover it. I had all the details of the plot nailed down, too. For example, one of the kids would be a little chubby and clearly masturbates a lot, but is really cool deep down. The other friend would be a huge insufferable pothead that always busted out quotable one-liners (an example – main nerdy, Sean Astin-stock character: “The pirate just tore open my mom’s brassiere, threw her down the stairs, and violated her!” to which Pauly Shore-modeled character quips, “Dude, after 400 years without any poonani, wouldn’t you be a little eager to savage the beaver?” Everyone then laughs). There would be bullies that the pirate would obviously tear to shreds, and there would be a dreamgirl who the main nerdy guy just couldn’t land until a cold-hearted buccaneer joined the fray. I even thought it would be a great idea to have the Captain of the British navy ship and the ever-suspicious high school principal played by the same actor. At the end of the film, the vicious pirate has obviously been welcomed with open arms by the entire community (who conveniently and hilariously fail to notice this psychopath’s trail of blood and pillaged wenches), and our two anti-heroes are awash in the much-sought-after gifts of high school popularity and teenage pussy. Maybe one day…

Jason X

Every once in a while, a movie is released to an unsuspecting public that defies all logic and rational thought; a film that must have been contrived, one assumes, whilst the writers were on peyote. Everyone knows what I’m talking about: that rare – albeit endemic – roll of celluloid that has no fucking business ever appearing on a cinema screen.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have seen such a movie (well, many of them, actually).

And that movie is Jason X.

A little synopsis: In 2008, Jason Voorhees is captured by some scientists, who hope to use his “advanced cellular regeneration” to manufacture weaponry for the US military (of course). Only Jason escapes during some nonsense scientific procedure and manages to kill off a bunch of soldiers. The head scientist, obviously himself a smart man, somehow manages to lure Jason into a cryogenic chamber, and locks him in.

This freezes Jason to the point that he ends up on a spaceship in the year 2455. Earth has become too polluted, and all humans have moved to the brilliantly-named new planet called “Earth 2”. It’s only natural that in the process of ditching an entire planet, scientists would decide to bring along some ogre in a hockey mask.

I’d just like to interject here with a fun picture I’ve got in my head. It involves a number of high-paid studio execs sitting around a boardroom table somewhere in Hollywood, throwing around ideas for the new Jason movie.

Somebody says, “So what’s the new planet going to be called?”

Someone else, presumably with the intelligence of a canine: “How about Earth 2?”

The whole chorus of producers: “Brilliant!”

Anyways…

As the journey to Earth 2 unfolds, the unsuspecting crew begins to investigate the rather strange specimen in their cargo, and end up accidentally releasing his frozen corpse from the freezer room. Naturally, two teenagers (one named “Stony” – it seems stock potheads are still en vogue in 2455) decide to have sex in this cryogenic chamber room in which Jason is thawing, and what-do-you-know, Jason awakes and hacks the two lovers to pieces.

I’m not going to give away any more of the plot, but you can guess where this is going. Jason roams the spaceship slowly killing off the entire crew for no discernable reason other than the fact that he’s Jason. Somebody figures out a way to kill him and he is blown up in spectacular fashion, while simultaneously giving us clues that a sequel will be coming.

Whew! I’m out of breath. So I guess the question remains: Did I like this movie?

Well I’ve gotta admit that I was entertained. But really, I was more perplexed…I mean, how on earth did Jason X get made?

Sure, the recycled plot about kids lost in the woods at Camp Crystal was getting old, but seriously…who in the hell thought, “Jeez, you know, Alien is a pretty decent movie. Why don’t we just completely steal that film, scene for scene, and replace the Alien with Jason?”

Unbelievably, according to the credits, hundreds (if not thousands) of people, who made this film their bread and butter, thought it was a good idea. Stupefying, I know.

Would I recommend Jason X? That depends. If you were a Harvard literature professor, feminist, human rights activist, etc, probably not.

On the other hand, if you got your kicks out of mixing whiskey with Pennzoil, shooting birds off your trailer balcony, or your name was Peter Spadoni, I would go out and see this turkey.

Captain Ron

This past long weekend, I took part in a few real Canadian traditions. One of these was going cross-border shopping in Pennsylvania to find some stellar deals not found north of the border. No sales tax means great prices, right? And on the way home, I toasted one of the other great Canuck long-weekend traditions by going way over my duty limit (in both merchandise and booze) and bullshited Canadian customs about it. No, bullshited is too light a word…I lied through my teeth.

Customs officer: “Where were you, son?”

Me: “I attended the Grammar Fair in Shnedictedy, New York, sir.”

Customs officer: “The Grammar Fair?”

Me: “Yes, sir. The best speller wins.”

Customs officer (rubbing his eyes in fatigue): “Spend any money down there?”

Me: “Why, only enough for a new dictionary and a spelling cap.”

Customs officer, sighing: “Dollar amount?”

Me: “About eight American dollars, sir.”

Customs officer: “Any booze or tobacco?”

Me: “Why, I don’t touch the stuff. I’m a teetotaler, as we say in the spelling business.”

Customs officer: “Go on your way, then.”

Meanwhile, my trunk was loaded to the gills with outlet shopping, fireworks, and contraband moonshine.

I love this type of nonsense, of course. I always find it quite humorous that while US customs treats everyone like a criminal and/or terrorist, Canadians are basically trying to bust their own citizens who spend too much on shopping. Perfectly illustrates the differences between our two countries.

Other than breaking numerous duty treaties, I did something south of the border that really should be a long-weekend tradition:

I got drunk and watched Captain Ron.

For the un-enlightened: Captain Ron was a mildly shitty box-office turd that Hollywood flushed onto an unprepared public in late September 1992. Needless to say, things have never been the same.

The plotline is fairly standard, and I have to hand it to the screenwriters for developing a delectably stupendous recipe. You take one part Martin Short (Hamilton’s favourite son) as a buttoned-down, hapless buffoon and mix it with a careers-going-down-in-flames Kurt Russell as a ne’er do well sea Captain…put them in the Caribbean…mix in a dash of pirates here, a sprinkle of Latin American revolutionaries there…and – bingo! – you’ve got yourself a masterpiece.

Short plays Martin Harvey, the head of a Chicago family that one day miraculously learns that they’ve inherited a yacht once owned by Clark Gable. Martin decides to bring the family down to the Caribbean and pick up this boat to sail back to Miami. However, once they get there, they discover the boat is a wretched piece of shit, and the only person in sight who they think can help them get the fair vessel back to the mainland is a shirtless hippy with a shortlong and an eye-patch. You guessed it: Captain Ron.

Only Captain Ron can’t read a map or drive a boat. He stares at Martin’s wife’s tits on every occasion, admits – over beers – that he jerks off in the shower to Martin’s 11-year-old son, ruthlessly hits on the barely pre-pubescent daughter, and just lazily hangs around getting drunk while Martin practically shits his pants over the family’s predicaments.

We’ve all seen Martin’s character before. Richard Dreyfus played him quite nicely in What About Bob? (a true classic), as the uptight dad who acts, quite rationally mind you, like a total prick when confronted with a lunatic. Meanwhile, the family falls in love with said lunatic while uptight dad just looks like an uptight dad. I gotta say that if some greasy hippy was grabbing my wife’s ass and admitting to my children about “hiding the salami”, I wouldn’t be none too happy, but screenwriting convention has to make this scumbag loveable, goddamnit.

And fall in love with Captain Ron does the family ever do, much to Martin’s chagrin. Why, one can glean this fact by just looking at the poster! Of course, by the end of the movie, Martin has come around. But not before Captain Ron rescues the family from pirates, revolutionaries, and those dirty, evil Cubans.

I have to admit that while this sounds terrible, at the same time (while intoxicated, remember), this movie was fucking fantastic. Sure, Captain Ron is a walking, talking cliché, but his scumbaggery is so endearing that it’s hard to see him for the pederast that he really is.

So next long weekend, do yourself a favour. Grab some rum or a pina colada, say fuck it to the fireworks, and just sit at home with an old friend…the uber-tanned, eye-patched, mulleted Captain Ron.

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot

Ah...Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Brings me back.

I remember pleading with my dad to rent this cinematic monstrosity around 1992, when I was about 10 or so.

"Look, dad!" I exclaimed, handing him the movie box while he perused more "erotic" selections.

"Hmm, let's see..." he said, and I could practically hear him groan as he read the back of the box. "Isn't there anything else you'd like to rent?"

"No!" I pleaded, on the verge of a tantrum.

Unfortunately for him, my dad relented, and sat through what had to be two of the more painful hours of fatherhood. I put my folks through a lot of shit when I was younger, but this had to rank somewhere near the bottom.

"So, dad, didn't you love it?" I asked him ecstatically when the movie finished.

The old man sighed. "Some things, son," he said, "you'll understand when you're older."

Well I finally got what Carl Spadoni was rambling about:

Kids are fucking stupid.

For the uninformed, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is a comedy starring Sylvester Stallone and Golden Girls star Estelle Getty, about a cop whose elderly mother meddles with his life to the point of going on raids and chases with him. Yeah, I know...it's pretty much the anti-Cobra in every possible sense of the word. (I can't even imagine Marion Cobretti having a mother. For all I know the man was born in a landmine explosion. Moving on...)

Back in 1991, Stallone, seeing how Schwarzenneger had parlayed his steely action stardom into cuter, more family-friendly roles (think Twins, Kindergarten Cop, and - shudder - Junior) decided he'd give it a shot. What resulted was one of the worst films of the decade.

And just how bad is this movie? Rest assured, it's bad. Fucking terrible, even. It's so bad that it makes Stallone's work in Over the Top seem Shakesperean in comparison. It's so bad, in fact, that I'd be surprised that anyone involved in even the smallest aspect of the movie - from the producers all the way down to the pimply-faced teens selling tickets at the cinema - ever had a future in show business again. I like to think that instead of waterboarding Al Qaeda and other terrorist suspects at Guantanemo Bay, the US just shows this film on a constant loop.

For a little backstory: Sly Stallone plays Sgt. Joe Bomowski, a tough-as-nails cop who's just been dumped by his Lieutenant. Taking pity on him, his frail older mother comes out to visit him and stay at his place, making his life an all-around misery. A couple choice scenes:

Stallone's trying to save some douchebag from jumping off a building. Mama Bomowski comes on the loudspeaker and gives Sly such a hard time about things that the jumper takes pity on him. Har-dee-har-har.

Or in another "hilarious" moment, she washes his gun in dish detergent.

The problem with the movie is not the premise. In reality, I actually think that under the right circumstances, it could work. But with Stallone at the helm and Getty at the ass, it's a god-awful mess bereft of laughs and, at less than 90 minutes, feels longer than a war.

Honestly, folks, there's not much more to say about this putrid wretch of a film that hasn't already been said by a million critics. I believe it was universally hated by nearly everyone at the time...

Except for a stupid kid back in '92, who between listening to the new Hammer record and fretting about which track pants to wear to impress the girls (Puma or Reebok?), gave this pathetic excuse of a movie a chance.

Commando

On the subject of stupid-awesome films, there's Commando, and then there's everything else. This movie recently came back into my life after watching the great Taken (see last post). One cannot talk seriously about that film without understanding the older, campier, and generally more enjoyable Commando.

I remember seeing the box for this movie in Jumbo Video circa 1988, after "accidentally" losing myself in the adult section (for those of you that remember the pink room at the back of the Dundurn location, give yourself a pat on the back). The image of a rippling-muscled Arnold Schwarzenneger, dressed in a military vest and be-smudged with camo makeup, with the tagline "Somewhere, somehow, someone's goint to pay!" scared and fascinated me at the same time. Of course ol' Anne Spadoni took one look at the box and refused to rent the film, opting instead for some worthless family vehicle such as Turner and Hooch. Luckily, though, my corrupt older cousin happened to have a copy of Commando laying around in his basement, and one memorable Christmas, we screened this gem while our folks were busy upstairs getting into the vino.

Seeing the movie years later, nothing has changed. Obviously I laugh now when back then I would cover my eyes in horror. But still...

The plotline of Commando is all too familiar: a retired ex-special forces badass is forced to come out of retirement and knock some heads together to get his kidnapped daughter back. Sound familiar?

Schwarzenneger plays John Matrix, the former mastermind of an elite military squad. Matrix lives in some mountain retreat with his daughter Jenny, and during the opening credits, we're treated to some of the cheasiest tender father-daughter moments in movie history (which is admittedly out of place considering the movie's high body count). Matrix and Jenny just want to enjoy their privacy, go swimming, and feed deer. Yes, that's right - one of the opening shots is of Schwarzenneger actually feeding a doe.

Seems like someone isn't too thrilled about Matrix living peacefully, and has slowly been killing off all the former members of his team. The bad guys then kidnap Matrix's daughter, threatening to kill her unless he helps them assassinate the President of Val Verde. Standard stuff, really.

The head bad guy is a former member of Matrix's squad long-thought-to-be-dead, an Aussie named Bennett. This has been pointed out before, but Bennett constitutes what could seriously be considered the gayest looking bad guy in film history. Think about it: chain-mail vest, large moustache, leather gloves, tight leather pants, Australian accent...all that's missing is a whip and a bottle of KY. Nevermind, though, because Bennett's gang of colourful henchmen provide a full movie's worth of great deaths.

And boy does Schwarzenneger unleash in this film. He smashes noses, strangles necks, hacks limbs, drops people off cliffs, lifts cars, shoots and electrocutes and smothers and burns the poor badguys, an army of them unable to hit Matrix with a single shot. If the US Army had a guy like this on their side, not only would 9/11 have never happened, Osama would be safely in custody, and every enemy would be pissing blood.

The action in this film - for 1985, mind you - is top-notch. But what really sets Commando apart is the one-liners. Examples:

Matrix is dangling the slimiest bad guy, Sully, from his leg over the edge of a cliff.

"Remember when I said I would kill you last, Sully?" he asks.

"Yeah! That's right, Matrix, you did!" Sully pleads.

"I lied."

Matrix releases Sully, who falls to his death.

Or in another case, Matrix gets on an airplane with a huge Jamaican dude. They sit down in the seat, and Matrix slams his elbow into the dude's nose, then breaks his neck. He puts a blanket over they guy and places his hat over his face. The stewardess comes by:

"Can I get you two anything?" she asks.

"I'm ok. And please don't disturb my friend...he's dead tired."

Against my better judgements, I'm not going to point out any holes in the plot (of which, believe me, there are many). You see, Commando itself is basically one giant plot hole. It's action porn of the highest order, and if you're looking for a couple of hours to just kill and enjoy senseless mayhem, you could do no better.

As an aside, I heard that Gene Simmons was originally considered for this role. I just can't possibly imagine the lead singer of Kiss mowing down guys with a bazooka, but hey...someone in Hollywood thought about it once. Better Gene Simmons than Richard Simmons, I suppose. Gives me hope that I might be able to play the title role in the sequel...